Columnists

BY S. AMJAD HUSSAIN
BLADE COLUMNIST
In a refreshing move, the Toledo Clinic, a 175-physician group took out a recent full-page advertisement in The Blade that compared laboratory and radiology rates it charges with those charged by ProMedica and Mercy Health Partners, the two main players in the Toledo health-care market. There is a gross inequality in charges between the Toledo Clinic and …

BY MARINA BOLOTNIKOVA
BLADE EDITORIAL WRITER
Late last month, the University of Toledo hosted a debate that’s occurring with growing frequency on American college campuses. For two hours, UT student senators discussed — and ultimately rejected — a resolution backed by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine that would have called on the university to divest from businesses linked to Israel’s occupation of …

BY JACK LESSENBERRY
BLADE OMBUDSMAN
DETROIT — Wayne County Chief Probate Judge Milton Mack is frustrated with the mental health system in Michigan. He’s seen a lot of mentally ill people pass through his courtroom in his nearly quarter-century on the bench. …

BY DAVID SHRIBMAN
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Jeb Bush has been a putative candidate for the White House for only a few weeks, and already he is discovering that presidential politics requires an elegant equipoise. …

BY THOMAS WALTON
BLADE COLUMNIST
Funny thing about the word “awesome.” It’s been in the dictionary ever since there have been dictionaries. But over the course of the last generation or so, we have managed to debase it and dilute it to the point of irrelevance. What’s worse, we don’t have names any more. We’re all just “dude.” …

BY JEFF GERRITT
DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DETROIT — Lucas County Sheriff John Tharp walked into the Ryan Correctional Facility on Detroit’s east side and asked for Shannon Keys — Michigan Department of Corrections prisoner No. 210418. Mr. Tharp didn’t come to interrogate Keys. He came to ask him for ideas on how to do his job better. …

BY JEFF GERRITT
DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
On the second floor of the Lucas County jail sits an oasis: a small but neat, clean, and welcoming 2,000-book library where inmates check out books by authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker and even write poetry. Pictures of freedom fighters and other historical figures, such as Cesar Chavez and Nelson Mandela, line the wall.…